Jessica Krueger's blog

I’ve always been one to judge a book by it’s cover; not necessarily to the exclusion of picking up a tomb for casual reading, but I must admit that there’s nothing quite like a pretty picture to make me want to thumb the first few pages. Such was the case, I’m ashamed to admit, which led to my perusal of Melvin Konner’s recently revised The Tangled Wing: Biological Constraints on the Human Spirit (Henry Holt, NY). The yellow cover depicts da Vinci’s “Vertuvian Man” superimposed with an extended wing, an image which is also used to break up the text into sections, and at the very top a photograph of a human, male back.

Given that I am entering the culmination of my Bryn Mawr education as a second semester senior, complete with the juggling of thesis and classwork which such an academic role entails, it should come as no surprise that my thoughts are never far from the end of times. Indulging in my fatalism is rapidly becoming my favorite form of procrastination, and whenever I have successfully dodged a volley of questions about my uncertain, post-graduation, future, I find myself visiting my favorite apocalyptic website, Exit Mundi, to give me hope that maybe the world will end tomorrow and I won’t have to worry about assignments, job searches or graduate school. “Giggle!” is by far my favorite end scenario: a world run by women due largely to the fragile nature of that which makes the stronger sex -- the Y-chromosome. Exit Mundi explains that the X-chromosome “hates” the Y and has consequently unleashed an uncompromising attack upon him, reducing him to a mere nubbin of genetic material.(6) But how can coils of genes resent, much less damage, each other? What is going on here? Is the Y-chromosome really under attack, and will this battle result in the eradication of the human male?